The impending death of Google Reader has sparked much wailing and gnashing of teeth, petition-signing, alternative-seeking and rending of garments. But what about the people who made RSS? Dave Winer, one of the fathers of the both RSS and the blog, couldn’t care less.
He posts on his blog:
I won’t miss it. Never used the damn thing. Didn’t trust the idea of a big company like Google’s interests being so aligned with mine that I could trust them to get all my news.
And besides, I didn’t think the mailbox approach to news was right. Who cares how many unread items there are. I like the river of news approach and I have a very fine set of rivers that keep me well supplied with news and podcasts.
…Next time, please pay a fair price for the services you depend on. Those have a better chance of surviving the bubbles.
Interestingly enough, he shrugs off the value of unread counts, the lack of which is why many users claim Twitter is an unworthy replacement.
Google Reader is going to uproot a lot of routines when it finally goes, even though there are some replacements stepping up to take its place. But not everyone is going to be sad to see it go, no matter how much it may feel that way. [Dave Winer via ZDNet]